FBI Agents Accused Of Torturing U.S. Citizen Abroad Can't Be Sued

[Demeter]

OF COURSE THEY CAN'T, SILLY RABBIT!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-torture-abroad-sued-appeals-court_562a479de4b0ec0a389422b3

Federal agents who illegally detain, interrogate and torture American citizens abroad can't be held accountable for violating the Constitution. A divided federal appeals court on Friday tossed the lawsuit of a U.S. citizen who claimed the FBI trampled his rights for four months across three African countries while he was traveling overseas. In so many words, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the man, Amir Meshal, couldn't sue the federal government for such violations, and punted the issue to someone else.

"If people like Meshal are to have recourse to damages for alleged constitutional violations committed during a terrorism investigation occurring abroad, either Congress or the Supreme Court must specify the scope of the remedy," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote for the 2-to-1 court.

Meshal's case had drawn support from a number of law professors, along with present and former United Nations special rapporteurs on torture, who had hoped the court would help clarify when the U.S. can be made to answer for abuses abroad. At issue in the case was a 1971 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bivens v. Six Unknown Unnamed Agents, which found for the first time that the Constitution allows citizens to hold liable federal officials who violate their rights -- even if Congress hadn't expressly passed a law to that effect. In subsequent decisions, however, Bivens liability has been greatly narrowed by the Supreme Court, and even more by lower courts interpreting those decisions. In Friday's ruling, the D.C. Circuit recognized the current legal landscape and noted it simply couldn't be extended to the "unconventional context" of Meshal's case -- a criminal investigation occurring abroad focused on alleged terrorist activity. This meant that his claims had to be dismissed.

"To our knowledge," Rogers wrote, "no court has previously extended Bivens to cases involving either the extraterritorial application of constitutional protections or in the national security domain, let alone a case implicating both -- another signal that this context is a novel one."

Indeed, all of this may very well be too new for judges to grapple with. And one of Rogers' main rationales for rejecting Meshal's suit is that courts are ill-equipped to dabble in the "sensitivities" of national security and foreign policy matters, where the political branches of government occupy the field.

Courts are "generally not suited to second-guess executive officials operating in foreign justice systems," the judge wrote.

But the court's recounting of Meshal's story seemed to offer its own counterargument. As told by the court, Meshal's case painted a picture of government overreach and egregious constitutional violations -- allegations that Rogers herself acknowledged were "quite troubling."


SO, TORTURE ISN'T TORTURE, IF IT'S TAKEN IN CONTEXT? THAT'S AN INTERESTING TORTURE OF THE LAW...

[w0nderer]

1. main point there

operating in foreign justice systems

if those justice systems HAVE laws against torture or even better ARE signatories (jurisdiction) of international court

wouldn't that make the FBI agents also under the jurisdiction of international court?

if one operates in Japan for instance, one would operate under Japanese jurisdiction and law

[Demeter]

2. Still making our own reality, after all these years

[w0nderer]

3. It's going to go like a bad hockey game (sooner or later)

you know the kind where the referee won't give penalties to one side that keeps being overly violent

sooner or later the other team will say 'eff it' and start taking the law into their own hands



at that point, it'd be a bad thing(tm) to be an American of any sort (uniform or not) abroad

because people would know that no 'law' applies to Americans, so they would make their own law, and apply it

sad, but if it keeps getting pushed, it'll happen, it's human nature